


this feeling follows me wherever i go

by imgoingtocrash



Series: Pepperony Week 2020 [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 80s/90s vibes, AU, Agent Carter References, Alternate Universe - College/University, Banter, California, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Howard isn't as bad as he could be, MIT Student Tony and Harvard Student Pepper, Obie isn't Evil, Pepperony Week, Stark Mansion, in this house we love and appreciate the Jarvis family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24829897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: It’s always something with Pepper, which is both annoying and what he loves most about her—she never stops challenging him.She’s fascinating and smart and it’s infuriating. It’s like fighting with himself, if he was super hot and taller and a red-head and much better at dealing with people.“Pepper, c’mon, can’t you just—I’m asking you to visit for the summer. This is like a free getaway. This is romantic!”“Oh, well, if it’s romantic, then,” she hums, acting for all the world like this is just another one of his crazier notions that she’s entertaining.Pepper visits Tony for the summer vacation before the last semester that they’ll be in college together. The Stark family is complicated, but Tony’s and Pepper’s growing feelings for each other aren’t.
Relationships: Ana Jarvis & Edwin Jarvis & Pepper Potts, Ana Jarvis & Edwin Jarvis & Tony Stark, Ana Jarvis/Edwin Jarvis, Howard Stark & Maria Stark & Tony Stark, Howard Stark/Maria Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Pepperony Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796032
Comments: 34
Kudos: 96





	this feeling follows me wherever i go

**Author's Note:**

> I did not intend to take a year to write a sequel to _i like (the idea of) you_. Oops. Hopefully you’ll find that it was worth the wait, because I really did have fun writing this.
> 
> You can probably read this without reading the original fic, but there are some references to events from that story (particularly how Pepper and Tony got together and the more college-centric parts of this college AU).
> 
> Enjoy!

Tony has extended his collegiate career as long as humanly possible.

His parents believe it’s because he’s lazy, misguided, and spoiled. (Okay, so the first and last are his father and the middle his mother, but still.)

His peers—well, he’s never much cared for what they think. He started college younger than any of them, and a lot of them stopped after their Bachelor’s. He never got to know many of them well apart from Rhodey because it was sort of a lost cause—to most he was always going to be Howard Stark’s son first, Tony Stark himself second.

Point being: if they assume he thinks he’s better than the rest of them just because he goes to their parties and drinks their booze but doesn’t ever need help with his classwork or creating his own projects, he lets them.

Pepper, astute, astounding woman that she is, buys into exactly none of those excuses.

They’re laying on her bed, taking a break from half-heartedly packing up her dorm. She’d been making pretty good progress on her own, but Tony has been very purposefully distracting her since the moment he arrived.

“An internship at the company, living with your parents again…” It’s like she’s ticking off the entire list of reasons he hates going back to Los Angeles every year on her fingers. It’s always the same—working his ass off, never living up to expectations, giving up and letting everyone down even more than they were the first time. Wash, rinse, repeat. A complete drag. 

“It’s going to be a long summer for you, huh?”

“Just me?” He raises an eyebrow playfully. “What, you’re saying you won’t miss me?”

“Eh,” she hums, giggling when he takes the opportunity to strike a few nimble fingers at her ribcage in retaliation. “Ha—okay, okay, _yes_! I’ll miss you.” 

She waits a beat, rolling off the twin bed and away from him with a pointed finger. “Just a little bit.”

“Jesus, Pep, I’m so touched.”

“Shut up,” she commands, but he can hear the smile in her voice despite her being turned towards an empty box on the floor. “I’m just saying it sucks, is all, knowing next semester will be your last one, and you’ll have had a crappy summer on top of that.”

“It doesn’t have to be my last…”

“Oh, no, no. We’ve talked about this.” She’s right, they have. Ad nauseam. Tony always on the losing end, or at the very least, never convincing her to take his side. Her hands are on her hips as she says this, which shouldn’t be so intimidating or sexy since she’s wearing denim overalls over a t-shirt and she’s still just a bit taller than him even without heels, but he still feels sufficiently cowed by her expression. “You’re graduating.”

“Well, ma’am yes _ma’am_.”

“I’m serious, Tony. Failing classes to stay any longer is just stupid. You could have graduated like three years ago with a Doctorate if you’d wanted.”

Tony snaps his fingers, as if enlightened. “That’s it! Hey, every girl’s parents want them to marry a doctor, right? I’ll stay another four years in Boston and your parents will freak. It’s perfect.”

“Tony, my father is an electrician and my mother worked retail for almost a decade. They don’t care what you do for a living. Besides, you know my parents like you just as you are.”

Tony focuses his gaze away from Pepper, feeling heat run to his cheeks. He met her parents when they visited for Family Day a month ago, and his attempts at charming the ever-loving crap out of them paled in comparison to his more genuine moments of snarking and cursing like a sailor and coming late to dinner one evening with soot on his face from an ill-timed lab explosion.

“Must be genetic.”

“I can acknowledge the fact that you indirectly proposed to me just now, if you want.”

“Shutting up.”

Not that he hasn’t thought about—well, the future in general, concerning Pepper. This thing between them is just so new that he hasn’t considered that far. Especially because he’s half-sure he’s going to cheat on her or insult her or something that’s going to turn their really nice relationship into one of his usual self-made garbage fires.

He puts his hands behind his head, quietly observing as Pepper flits indiscriminately between packing tasks—she folds a couple of t-shirts then switches off to write something down in her spiral notebook before turning to a stack of textbooks. 

He’s dating a girl who keeps checklists. She goes over his calculations absent-mindedly as they play footsie under his usual table in the library. She’s polite and kind and she irons her clothes when he takes her to a nice restaurant. His parents would probably love someone like her.

“You know,” he says, voice pitched higher with the delight of an intriguing idea. “I’d have a much better summer if I had some company.”

“I seem to remember being rushed out of the door to your apartment specifically because you _didn’t_ want me to meet your parents.”

He sits up on the twin bed, scooting towards the side to more firmly make his case.

“That was before,” he argues. “That was forever ago.”

“That was barely two months ago.” She drops a stack of coat-hangers into a box with emphasis, an unimpressed look on her face.

“And we’ve clearly established since then that you’re not just some random girl I’m hooking up with.” 

“Not just some random girl,” she quotes. “I’m so flattered.” She bumps one of his knees on the way back toward her closet.

“Pep, I’m serious. This is the longest, most serious relationship I’ve ever been in. It’s very impressive for me. I talk about you all the time!”

“You talk to Jarvis about me,” she corrects…correctly. He doesn’t really call home much as it is, but he’s most accustomed to getting the butler over his parents anyway. There’s always some event, some party, some Stark Industries obligation. He thinks it’s only fair, though. They never call him either.

He groans. 

It’s always something with Pepper, which is both annoying and what he loves most about her—she _never_ stops challenging him. 

(He ignores thinking about thinking that he loves her, because it’s too soon and it isn’t—he’s known since that first party, since he started talking stocks the minute sex was off the table and she kept up with him like she wasn’t two beers from completely losing her sobriety.) 

She’s fascinating and smart and it’s infuriating. It’s like fighting with himself, if he was super hot and taller and a red-head and much better at dealing with people.

“Pepper, c’mon, can’t you just—I’m asking you to visit for the summer. This is like a free getaway. This is romantic!”

“Oh, well, if it’s romantic, then,” she hums, acting for all the world like this is just another one of his crazier notions that she’s entertaining.

He catches her by the pockets of her overalls, pulling her body against the mattress, catching her between where his legs hang, his feet just skating the floor. He skims her spine with his fingers through the denim, then all the way up to the criss-cross of the straps and through the cotton of her t-shirt.

“Come see me,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her lips that lazily morphs into another, warm and deep. Her arms wrap loosely around his neck, comfortably entangling them further. 

“Please. Please, please, please.” Only for her is he willing to do anything close to begging. 

Truly, it’s not a completely selfless ask, because Pepper will be an excellent distraction from everything waiting for him at home. Then again it’s also selfish in a way he’s unrepentant about—he wants more of her, even if it’s in a mansion full of bad memories that he’s spent the last seven years deftly avoiding by forcing himself to have a reason to stay in Boston instead.

She sighs into his mouth, but it’s not her usual, put-upon kind. It’s content. Possibly even fond.

“I’ll think about it,” she relents. Her hand moves to his cheek, gently tracing the stubble of his jaw with her thumb. “I’m not making any promises. My mom’s work friend got me a part-time job at the mall, and I have to decide if I’m getting onto the grad student track next year and—“

“Yes, Miss Potts,” he interrupts. “You’re very busy and important. I know, I’m lucky to be graced with your presence at all.”

“Very lucky.” She pats his cheek with a smile. She pushes him back and he allows himself to fall into the motion, bouncing on his back along with the mattress, appeased for now and content to watch Pepper pack this year of her life away one box at a time.

xx

Tony gets the call on a Tuesday morning. 

He’s spinning around in an office chair and half-heartedly flicking through a packet of missile blueprints that were placed in front of him a few hours ago.

It’s not his father’s best work, but he’s not stupid enough to actually say as much. Back in the day, mentioning a lack in Howard Stark’s ability was worth a lecture _and_ a slap on the wrist, if Tony pushed the matter. Because of that, Tony has stopped bothering to mention at all.

It’s more likely than not that he’ll end up sneaking a few tweaks to the folks down in engineering and allowing them to take all the credit. Obie has known about and supported this system since Tony was fifteen and insistent that his father’s latest iteration of weaponry had a seventy-five percent chance of very literally backfiring and killing people. It was unacceptable, and they both knew it. Not to mention that it would probably cost them heftily in lawsuits and a widespread weapons recall. It was easier to simply have the problem fixed and leave Howard’s self-image of unrivaled genius untarnished.

He doesn’t exactly have an office of his own at SI—he bounces around between Obie and his father, joining in on meetings, supposedly learning the tricks of the trade and more realistically making notations about the million other things he could be creating if his father considered any of his ideas that weren’t weapons.

Instead, he occupies any available empty space—conference rooms, break rooms on other floors, even parts of the lobby. He gets well known in the Stark Industries offices for simply popping up in places and therefore being very difficult to find when his father asks after him. (Which he considers an accidentally excellent strategy for avoiding multiple responsibilities that he wants no part of.)

Still, he’s known his father’s assistant, Miss Beverly, since he was young, and she apparently thinks that’s enough of a reason to pop her head into his current station, Obie’s office. He’s purposefully disgracing it by putting his shoes on the desk, which Obie always chides him for and his father calls unprofessional.

“What’s up, Bev?” he asks, his words garbled by the nougat and caramel in his mouth. Obie has a hidden sweet tooth, and he keeps the good shit in a desk drawer that Tony easily and consistently breaks into at his leisure.

“There’s a call for you on line one,” Miss Beverly answers, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow at…well, at his _everything_ , really. 

She was his mother’s friend before she was ever Howard’s assistant—in fact, she’s the one that eventually hooked them up, mostly to stop his father’s constant flirting and advances. She really liked being a personal assistant, probably because she was consistently excellent at it. She ended up being one of the women after World War II that stayed within the work force rather than settling down and raising a family during the Baby Boom. 

As a result, she’s always watched after Tony at the office like her own surrogate kid, and her motherly ferocity convinces him to both lower his feet and swallow before he speaks again.

“Who the hell is calling me?” he asks, mostly to himself. “No one calls me here.”

Miss Beverly shrugs, holding her palm out for the other half of his ill-begotten Milky Way bar, as if it’s payment. She puts the treat in her mouth and turns on her heel as quickly as she came, instructing, “Pick up the receiver before you press the button!” behind her, astutely aware that despite his knowledge of technology he has never been on the answering phones end of the company.

He does as instructed, answering the phone with a questioning, “Uh, hi? This is Tony.”

“Good Morning, Mister Stark,” comes the answer from a very familiar voice.

“Oh my god,” he breathes out. “It’s finally happening. Office phone sex. You really do listen. Hold on, if we’re doing this I gotta desecrate my father’s office, that son of a—“

Pepper sighs. “Aaaand you ruined it.”

He smiles, wishing he could see the repressed smile on her face that she has when she thinks he’s being funny and doesn’t want to admit it.

“You’re just a tease,” he replies, playing with a pen and actually trying to avoid such thoughts. He doesn’t need his dad getting any calls about Tony getting visibly turned on in the office. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

“Calling me with that sultry voice. What else is a man supposed to think?”

“Well, you could try using a different part of your body to do the thinking, just this once.” He imagines her on the other side of the phone, curling a rotary chord around her finger as they go back and forth. Definitely thinking with the wrong body part.

“You wound me,” he sighs, flatly adding, “Ouch.”

“You poor thing,” she says, overly faux-sympathetic. “Want me to kiss it all better?”

He raises an eyebrow, even though she can’t see it. Pepper can absolutely be playful and sexy when she wants to be, but this is…new. More forward than she tends to lean towards. Still, he’s willing to lean into it.

“Does this mean the phone sex thing is still on the table, because I could move to a bathroom and—“

“You’d rather do things over the phone than in real life?” she asks, like that implication is innocent.

“You’re kidding,” he replies, suspicious. “You’re messing with me, because you’re a super mean girlfriend who actually doesn’t like me at all.”

“Or…” Pepper drawls, and this time he imagines her hair up in one of her classic ponytails, dressed for the California sun and leaning against a telephone booth. “I’m at LAX right now, waiting for my very handsome boyfriend to come pick me up so I don’t have to call a cab with my last quarters.”

“Oh, I see, extortion, huh? You use me just for my cars, my wealth. I see how it is.”

“Tony,” she says, this time more straightforward. “Come pick me up?”

He swears that his brain freezes for the entirety of five seconds. Like, he still wasn’t sure if she was teasing until this second, and it’s—Pepper is here, at LAX, waiting for him. 

He hasn’t seen her in weeks after months of seeing her almost every day, and he just misses her, plain and simple. He hates being back at the mansion, back under his father’s thumb. He hates going out with people from Stark Industries and drinking too much to forget every shitty day doing stuff he doesn’t care about. He hates being a phone call away from Pepper instead of a few miles, because it’s not the same. It’s not her lavender body lotion and her fingernails scraping in his hair and falling asleep fully clothed and wrapped around Pepper instead of staying up wired or drunk until four in the morning.

“I—Yeah. Hell yeah. I’ll be there in like fifteen.” Tony almost slams the phone back in its cradle, but he brings it back to his ear to add, “And you better be there. As in, actually.”

He hears her laughter before the phone disconnects.

“Holy shit,” he says to himself. He shakes his head, coming out of his own self-imposed daze. He leaves the packet—he’ll talk to Obie about the changes later.

Tony doesn’t normally feel self-conscious, but he examines himself in the reflection of Obie’s computer screen for a moment. He knows he’s handsome. It’s less a bragging thing and more the knowledge that you don’t get into teenage girl magazines like _Tiger Beat_ as a fourteen-year-old nerd if you aren’t good looking. Still, he always feels…different, in a suit. 

Ripped jeans and t-shirts are a second skin built from years working in the garage, stealing parts and tools from his father’s workshop for his own needs no matter the later consequences. They remind him of who he is when the rest of it is stripped away—he likes to create, to invent, to fix. _That’s_ his passion. 

Sitting in board rooms, learning budget sheets, watching engineers test instead of doing the testing himself…that’s what the Armani suits and Ralph Lauren outfits represent. It’s fashionable, and he looks great, but it’s slightly depressing, like he’s slowly growing into the one man in the world he doesn’t want to be.

He could have gotten out scot free if he hadn’t questioned himself.

“Tony,” Obie says, the underlying question of, _why are you standing in my office?_ in his tone.

“Hey, good timing,” Tony lies.

Obie sighs. “What do you want?”

“Cover for me with my dad?” Tony asks, pinching his face just a little. Obie probably covers for him too much, sometimes, but he seems to relish in it a bit, like it allows him to be the fun uncle of their business duo, which he kind of is.

Obie seems to weigh his options, dropping his briefcase next to his desk and stripping off his suit jacket.

“Did you look at this?” Obie holds up the packet.

Tony snaps his fingers, proud of himself. “I did! It’s bad. Super wrong. Do not let them develop that, seriously.”

“We’re supposed to start production _tomorrow_.”

“So stall a little bit! Just—it’s important, I promise. I will get the fixes to you. Cross my heart.”

“Tony—“

“It’s—my girlfriend, you remember, my very first, serious, lovely girlfriend? She’s in town. Surprised me too, I know! Anyway, she’s at the airport and traffic at this time of day is perfect, so I gotta—” He points to the door, practically halfway out of it before Obie replies.

“You could send a car.”

“You’ve met my mother, she’d be so disappointed if all of those manner and decorum classes were for nothing. I gotta show up in person, maybe bring flowers! Come on, Obie, please?”

Obie sighs heavily, and Tony knows that he’s won. It’s probably bad when that’s how a lot of people seem to respond to him getting what he wants. He lets out a quick, “Thank you!” before he forces himself to walk to the elevator instead of run.

Tony doesn’t bring flowers.

It would probably be a really sweet gesture, but he’s more concerned with Pepper being minutes away that he doesn’t.

Pepper is seated on her rolling suitcase, her tennis shoes anxiously tapping away at the ground. As if he wouldn’t show up for her? Please.

“Hey there, Miss Potts.” He got a cab to the airport, and in doing so, did have time to make a cocktail napkin sign in the backseat, _Potts_ written in his script with a little heart messily next to it. He holds it up between his fingers, wiggling it in the wind.

Somehow, he thinks she’s far more charmed by the crappy sign than any kind of guess he would have made at flowers.

“I feel like I really do have to call you Mister Stark, now,” she replies, standing and looking him up and down. She runs her hands over his shoulders, caressing the expensive fabric. “You clean up nice.”

“Suits do it for you? Really? Of course. Business major, I should have known.”

She laughs, wrapping her arms around his back under the suit jacket and hugging him.

“Don’t throw away all of your jeans just yet,” she says into his neck.

He returns the hug easily, burying his face into the feminine smell of her shampoo. He never figured out which of the four bottles in her suite-style bathroom was hers, and it seemed creepy to ask, but it’s familiar, and he basks in having her this close again.

When they break apart, he moves to take her suitcase, keeping an arm lazily wrapped around her shoulders to guide them back to the waiting taxi cab. He could have called Jarvis for a ride, but his parents are in town, and his dad tends to be… _selfish_ about that particular butler perk, especially when it comes to Tony being the one asking for a ride to here or there.

“So,” he starts, comfortably allowing his hip to bump against Pepper’s as they meander through the crowd of the pick-up and drop-off section of the airport. “You’re here."

“I’m here,” she reiterates, taking his unimpressed look for the question that it is. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Oh, I’m very surprised. Almost shit myself silly all over Obie’s office.”

“Tony.” She grimaces.

“Too graphic. Noted.”

“It was a good time for it,” Pepper says, picking up her story as he loads her suitcase into the back of the cab. “The part-time job turned out to be pretty lucrative—I bought my plane ticket with more than enough to spare for a hotel room, incidentals—“

He makes the equivalent to the sound of car tires screeching, crossing his hands in a _time out_ gesture. “You’re joking, right?” 

He’s honestly affronted that she would ever consider a hotel. He hadn’t invited her to travel all this way and pay for it on her own. Hell, if he’d known she was coming, he would have sent the family jet. He would have _begged his father_ to let him send that jet.

She scrunches up her face, genuinely confused, like what she just said isn’t preposterous. “What?”

Tony shakes his head. “Adorable. You’re just adorable.”

He doesn’t say anything else, opening the passenger side door of the cab and forcing her to follow him to continue the conversation.

He gives the cabbie the address to the mansion, but Pepper’s not from California—the zip code doesn’t clue her into the fact that they’re going into one of the wealthiest areas of the city.

“Pepper, you’re not staying at a hotel. End of discussion.”

“Discussion not even started,” she scoffs back, crossing her arms in that prim, defiant way that she has where she makes him feel smaller by being shrewd and confident and unwilling to buy anything he’s selling unless she decides it benefits her.

It’s so sexy, genuinely, that he has to remember what the hell he was arguing about in the first place and drag his eyes away from her legs, expertly exposed by the white linen shorts she’s wearing.

He clears his throat, knowing from Pepper’s gaze that she spotted his distraction.

“Pep, you’re my guest, there’s no way you’re staying in a Motel 6.”

“It wasn’t going to be a Motel 6—“

“Anywhere compared to the Stark Mansion is a bedbug-infested shithole,” he argues.

“That doesn’t mean I should impose on your family—“

“Imposing.” Tony laughs. “My mother would insist. She _will_ insist, and tut in Italian, and you’ll give in because she perfected being the perfect hostess in 1952 when she realized what it was going to be like being married to Howard freakin’ Stark for the rest of her financially dependent life.”

It’s not his mother’s fault she grew up in a time where even a family as well-bred as her own wouldn’t give his mother her own chunk of the change without a husband to manage it for her. Maybe she really did love his father, before and even now, but it was painfully obvious as he was growing up that she could keep up with both her husband and son when it came to wits. Maria Stark could have done more, been more, if the times were different, and he wishes she had more opportunities to do so instead of playing the role of his father’s arm candy on their many trips to Washington to talk about defense contracts.

Pepper seems to sense the bitter note that’s creeped into his tone, but he staves off the sudden want of a drink in favor of meeting her hand in the middle of the cab's backseat and setting his fingers over hers.

This is supposed to be a good thing. It _is_ a good thing. Pepper is here for however long—he should have asked instead of whinging—and he’s actually excited to have her in his childhood home with the other few people in the world that care about him like she does.

“You staying with us was an eventuality, honey,” he sighs out, leaning his head on his balled up fist. “You might as well just get used to it now while you have the chance.”

The pet name slips out before he can think to catch it. He hasn’t ever even thought about calling her that, but they’d gotten into one of their rhythms and it had just…slipped out. He turns his face to the view of the city outside the window instead of looking at Pepper, desperate to hide the warmth creeping up his neck.

xx

“Wow.” 

Pepper swallows, throat suddenly dry looking at the pure opulence of the structure in front of her. It looks like a castle villa from some movie. Every inch screams old-school Hollywood from the shady palm trees that reach the roof to the painted stucco. It’s immaculate, like some kind of time capsule.

“This is…more than I was expecting.”

Tony snorts. “Oh, I’m sorry, which part of ‘spoiled rich heir to an entire company’ made you think I didn’t live in a mansion?”

“The part where I figured it was an expression! I thought it was just a really expensive, nice house—not an actual, real life mansion!”

She looks down at her outfit—the linen shorts that are just a step away from see-through and don’t pass the fingertip test, the cotton t-shirt that she’s about to sweat through in the summer sun—how Tony is wearing a suit in this, she’ll never know.

“I look like a schlub! I brought, like, one nice dress. That I got on clearance. At the JCPenny’s. Tony. Tony, oh my god, this is a disaster, I was going to impress your parents, I had a plan—”

He snickers. “A plan?”

She swats at him in a fruitless attempt to get him to take her more seriously.

“Yes! A plan! There was schmoozing, and being charming, and wearing my mother’s really nice karat diamond earrings!” She swats at him again when he keeps smiling at her all cute and whatever. “I was trying to do it for you, you know!”

“I’m sorry, it’s just—Pep, you’re a woman with more than half a brain. My mom is going to think you’re a gift from god himself. My dad…” He shakes his head, avoiding that completely. “It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Whatever happens is gonna happen.”

Pepper frowns, only just avoiding a whine when she says, “I’m so sweaty…”

“I know. It’s weirding me out. What the fuck kind of weather is going on in Ohio? Do you have the sun where you’re from?”

“You people just have too much.”

“You people? Wow.”

“Oh, you know what I meant—“

“No, I see how it is, you’re California-ist.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“That is a thing, and I’m very offended by it.”

“You’re ridiculous, is what you are.”

“Oh, me? I’m the one with issues when you’re sweating like it’s a goddamn 5k—“

“Why would you keep bringing that up when I just said—“

“Anthony.”

“—and the real question is why _aren’t_ you sweating in that ridiculous suit!”

“Ridiculous? Really, because from where I was standing about twenty minutes ago you were gonna jump my bones over it—“

“You’re exaggerating, I said it looked _good_ —“

“Anthony!” comes a prim call, and oh my god, that’s Tony’s mother, that's Maria Stark watching them bicker at her front door, hearing Tony imply that she was about to jump all over him in public. 

It’s the opposite of her plans to impress his parents. Pepper wants to die. Kill her now.

“Hey, Mom,” Tony says, completely unfazed.

“Shouldn’t you be at the office at this hour?” she asks. “You know how your father gets.”

Tony waves his hand. “Obie’s covering for me. It’s one afternoon. Besides.” 

He gestures grandly towards Pepper.

Maria sighs, accepting and a little indulgently fond. “Alright, alright, go ahead.”

“Mom, this is Pepper Potts. She’ll be staying in town for a little while, so I offered her a guest room.”

“Virginia,” Pepper gently corrects, hoping to save an ounce of formality. “Pepper’s just—you know. College nickname, seems to have stuck.”

Tony pouts despite the fact that he didn’t even give her the nickname himself—some other girls in her Freshman dorm adopted the moniker after she screamed at and pepper sprayed a leery potential on-campus rapist in the face when the rest of them had been frozen in fear.

“I really didn’t mean to impose,” she insists. “It was supposed to be a surprise and I offered to get a hotel, but Tony—“

“ _Sciocchezze_!” Maria interrupts firmly, shepherding Pepper inside by the shoulders. “No, no, dear, it’s not a problem at all. We’re more than happy to have you. Let me just—“

She looks around as if she’s misplaced something, finding it in the woman who seems to materialize at the end of the entryway.

“Oh, Ana, dear, would you mind making some tea for us? We’ll take it on the patio. And please find your husband—he’ll need to take this lovely young lady’s bags and prepare one of the guest rooms immediately.”

“Oh, you really don’t have to—“ Pepper tries, but Tony shakes his head like it’s a lost cause, which it turns out to be.

“Of course, Misses Stark,” the woman—Ana—responds with an accented lilt.

“Wonderful,” Maria says, squeezing Pepper’s shoulder with her perfectly manicured nails. “I’m so excited to get to know you, darling. Tony so rarely talks about girls he’s interested in like he does with you. You must be special.”

Tony raises his eyebrows and shrugs in a bit of a _told you so_. Of course his mother is just as naturally charming as Tony himself. Maria is personable and elegant in all of the right ways that make it hard to say no even though Pepper is completely not used to this kind of attention and treatment.

“That’s very sweet of you to say,” Pepper replies, leaning into the kindness.

“Don’t be so modest, Pep!” Tony worms up to her other side, ticking points off on his fingers. “Business major at Harvard with a minor in art history, 3.9 GPA, and hey, next year she’s getting on the track for a graduate’s degree in accounting, how about that?”

“Did you hack into my school records?” Pepper whispers through her teeth, locked in a harmless smile. She only just mailed in her graduate degree paperwork to her advisor—she hadn’t even told Tony about her decision yet.

Tony shrugs in his non-apology way, whispering back, “Little bit.”

“Your parents must be so proud,” Maria enthuses, leading them onto an expansive patio paved with smooth brick. Columns and palm trees encase the space to give a further sense of privacy, bordering a pool that’s big enough for—what, fifty people? A hundred?

Tony pulls out a chair for his mother at one of many white iron tables, following up by doing the same for Pepper with a grin that’s supposed to be charming, but comes off as smug, silently telling her how charming he’s being, and doesn’t that make him oh-so desirable?

Pepper rolls her eyes and he smiles in return, as is their routine.

“Anthony is a high achiever too, as I’m sure you know.” Maria pats Tony’s hand and adds, “When he applies himself, of course.”

“Here we go,” Tony huffs, faux-casually leaning into his chair with the back of his head perched on his hands.

“Sweetheart, you know I just want you to succeed,” Maria insists. To Pepper, she says, “He doesn’t like when I call him out on it, but he started MIT at fifteen—I know how smart my son is. He could have finished his studies a long time ago if he wanted to.”

“He’s very smart,” Pepper agrees. “And well-motivated, when he wants to be.” 

She thinks of the hours he spends on his AI program, of the ramshackle lab that he and Rhodey have set up in the corner of their living room. When it’s something Tony wants to be doing, there isn’t any stopping him. Writing research papers for academic journals for his finals just isn’t on the top of his list, even if the topics of his research are.

“You have a lovely home.” Pepper changes the subject. Best to keep the spotlight off of Tony and any of his perceived failings. “I’m shocked you never had pets—my parents got this cute little Lhasa Apso when I went away to college—named him Brucie. That dog would kill for this much free space to run around in.”

“Dad wouldn’t even consider it,” Tony grumbles, then quirks his head with a smile. “Though, there was a flamingo, for a while.”

“Okay, now I know you’re messing with me,” she snorts.

“I’m afraid young sir is not joking,” Jarvis says, announcing his arrival. With him is a tea set, polished and unblemished. He sets the place-ware with practiced ease, but Pepper catches when he grumbles, “ _Bernard_ ,” with heat, as if the exotic bird did him some sort of disservice.

“Oh, yes, that was one of Howard’s more… _adventurous_ choices, wasn’t it?” Maria chuckles, like it was simply akin to Pepper’s father buying a new brand of detergent for them to try at the store and not bringing a wild animal to their mansion. 

“Thankfully gone shortly after I arrived and talked some sense into him—a creature like that belongs in a zoo, not a proper family home.”

Tony doesn’t elaborate on his snort into his teacup, but Pepper doesn’t really need him to. Tony’s stories of the Starks don’t tell the story of a proper family home, whatever that actually means in Maria’s mind. Pepper might instead assume it was more like a time bomb waiting to explode when Tony’s father was home, and a lonely mausoleum when Tony was ignored and left on his own.

Not that it’s her place to get into their family drama, but, well—she can see what this home has done to Tony, the way it makes him act differently than when they’re alone. The Tony she knows is kind, excitable, curious, snarky, intelligent—even a little soft at heart, when he allows himself to be. 

Here he mocks. He snipes. He says things under his breath or regrets the things he chooses to take a stand over. Pepper sees it in his eyes, the way old wounds are still sensitive under his skin.

She places a hand onto Tony’s knee under the table, comfortingly running her thumb over the fabric of his suit.

“It’s good to see you again, Jarvis,” Pepper says, once again trying to shift the conversation in a better direction. She’s always been good at that sort of thing—smoothing people over. Her father always says it will do her wonders in the boardroom one day, but she’s more realistically imagining a boxed cubicle at some kind of accounting firm in her future.

Jarvis smiles. His smile is warm, the kind of easy affection she imagines Tony was desperate for as a kid. 

“It is a pleasure to see you again as well, Miss Potts,” he replies with a nod, and Pepper feels like he really means it, like she can hear the earnest intention in the tones of his voice. “I shall do my best to make your stay at Stark Mansion most pleasurable.”

“Now this I need to hear,” Maria says when Jarvis takes his leave. “How in the world did you meet Jarvis?”

“Oh!” Pepper tries not to let her face heat up. ‘We just made out in front of him and then I ran out the door hungover in last night’s dress to dodge you and your husband, no big deal!’ is not an answer she wants to give.

“Well—“

“It was before spring break,” Tony says, half of what may or may not be a Milano from the spread Jarvis delivered in his mouth.

“Anthony, manners,” Maria chides. There’s a certain exasperation in her tone, like she’s realized she’s trained Tony’s manners as much as she’s ever going to at this point, and that his choices to disregard his breeding are purposefully ignorant of that.

“Mmm-mmm,” Tony replies while chewing it through, a muffled, _yeah yeah_ , buried in there somewhere. “Anyway, like I was saying, it was when you guys surprised me right before spring break.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Maria hums. “The restaurant you took us to that night was fantastic.”

“The place on Park Street,” Tony clarifies. “Pepper’s the one that told me about it. Anyway, she was going home for the break, and I wanted to see her before to congratulate her on finishing her exams before she left.”

“Oh, how sweet,” Maria coos, and god is she actually buying this? She’s either far too gullible or it’s something she badly wants to believe—that Tony can be that kind of boyfriend, that kind of person. Pepper knows that about him _now_ , but back when she first met him? She wouldn’t have believed Tony Stark met up with girls at his apartment just to say goodbye.

Not that what they actually did was anything close to some of the rumors about him that circulated between their campuses in years previous, but still. It wasn’t just a quick congratulations.

If Maria asks how Pepper and Tony met, she’s sure that Tony won’t hesitate to mention her embarrassing blurt of his last name.

Thankfully, Maria stands, brushing off her skirt. “Well, it’s been lovely to meet you, Virginia, but I have dinner with a friend to attend tonight with my husband. Hopefully we’ll get more chances to catch up before you leave—Howard’s just so busy these days, always going out of town.”

“And you always have to go with him,” Tony mumbles, bitter.

Maria still catches it, but stays composed. 

She’s not even bristled when she replies, “Yes, I do. And you’d be well to appreciate the free time that will allow you with your girlfriend without your father skulking over your shoulder, hm?”

Tony takes the olive branch for what it is, squeezing his mother’s hand when she holds it out to him. “Yeah, Mom. Of course.”

“Mmhm,” is Maria’s knowing reply before she swans off inside the house.

They sit on the patio in silence for a moment, listening to the palm trees brushing in the wind. Tony leans his legs over to her chair, tucking his dress shoes against her thigh.

“So. That was my mom.”

“She’s nice,” Pepper replies neutrally.

“She’s been playing peacekeeper around here for a long time.” Tony sighs, despondently playing with a pair of sunglasses dug up from inside his suit jacket.

“Sometimes I wish I was less…catty about things, I guess, but it always slips out. You know me, always talking too much.”

“I’ve noticed, yeah.”

“It’s just—“ Tony sits up suddenly, bone clearly picked. He drops the sunglasses onto the table with a clatter. “She talks about it like it’s old stuff—like Dad and I could just get over everything that he ever said to me or did to me for twenty-six years. Like it’s me being dramatic and making a big deal out of things, when it’s—”

He leans on the table, gesticulating with his hands and looking at her dead on.

“You get Howard Stark for a dad, right? And he’s supposedly this great guy—World War II hero, Stark Industries billionaire, still searching the Antarctic for his best buddy Steve Rogers, what a stand-up American role model. But to me he’s just—my dad. And he doesn’t even _deserve_ that title half the time because he’s bad at every part of it but sperm donation. Without photographic evidence, I wouldn’t know if he ever held me as a baby! How messed up is that?!”

It is pretty messed up. She’d had teenage fallouts with both of her parents at one time or another, but in the end they’d always been generous with physical affection, supported her dreams, and struggled through financial hardship to help send her to college that first year. She never doubted that her parents cared about her despite any lingering resentment over bad parenting choices they made at one time or another that left her less than happy.

“It’s just—he was so great at all of these other things, but for me it’s like—nothing. No effort. Completely given up. If I’m not doing exactly what he wants every second of the day, I’m nothing to him. And even when I am doing what he wants it’s not enough. I’m a disappointment to him, end of story. And I don’t give a shit, because I know he’s never going to care, never going to be happy with me.”

Tony sighs, burying his face in his hands as he says, “But he’s also my father, so I kinda still give a shit even when I don’t want to. How stupid is that?”

“It’s not stupid to want your parents to love you,” Pepper says, running a hand over his shoulder. “I get it. Things are complicated.”

“Complicated is an understatement,” he sighs, rubbing at his temples. “I’m sorry, this is supposed to be a vacation for you and I’m already bringing up all of…this.”

“Yeah, well, ‘all of this’ is part of you, and I like you, so.”

“Very cheesy, Miss Potts.” But it gets him to smile again, so she doesn’t regret it. “But thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She stands. “Now, as much as I will absolutely be hanging out with you in this pool at some point, I would love a tour of the rest of the house, if you’re up for it.”

“Sure. With any luck, our rooms are within easy sneaking-over-for-sleepovers distance.”

“Uh-huh. Should we take this to the kitchen, or…?”

“Jarvis will fight you for it. I’m not joking—he knows judo or something. I used to watch him practice, it’s crazy. He could kick my ass any day of the week.”

“Good to know. Sounds like he’ll be useful in defending my honor, one day.”

“Pfft. As if. He’d totally be defending mine, heartbreaker.”

xx

With his parents out of the house for the evening, Tony has decided to take Pepper out on the town—he’d been itching to get out of his suit, to get back to the way being in Boston always felt—free of expectations, filled with possibility and opportunity, hope on every horizon.

Nothing feels closer to that than driving with the top down in the waning California sun. He misses the familiar burn of it against his skin since he's living back east for most of the year. When he is home, he’s spending most of his daytime in the office, lucky for an unsupervised lunch break.

Pepper doesn’t have the proper appreciation that he does for a classic—his roadster is his baby from the ground up, a lost cause in his father’s eyes turned into a treasure of engineering prowess that looks badass with flames painted on. (And if that isn’t just one obnoxious metaphor for their entire relationship.)

Tony keeps stealing glances at Pepper from the driver’s seat. Not really stealing—she meets him halfway. He likes watching the way the sun runs through the mix of red and blonde in her hair. He likes her white-rimmed sunglasses and the sheen of her lip gloss reflecting in the light when she bites on her lip in that habitual way she hates.

He turns his eyes back to the road, slowly tapping the breaks at a red light.

“So. Grad school.”

“I figured you weren’t gonna let that go.” She leans an elbow between them. “I was going to tell you, you know. You found out early. You cheated.”

“Not pissed,” he assures. “Proud.”

“Oh. Well…thanks.”

“Uh-oh. That’s a little lackluster. I thought you wanted this. You said you weren’t going to send the paperwork if you didn’t.”

“I do, it’s just…” When he peeks over again, she’s drumming her blue-painted fingernails against the car, a striking visage despite the anxiety of the gesture. “It’s a lot of changes. One last semester together and then…”

He answers with a casual confidence that he wants to believe. “I’m rich and eccentric, you’re stubborn, we’ll make it work when we get there. This is supposed to be a _vacation_.”

She stews on things, thinks too much. This time he thinks she wants to let the worries go as much as he does. She acquiesces easily with the press of a kiss to his palm, keeping their hands joined across the seats.

“You’ve seen the opulence of the Starks,” he says, turning onto the next street and into the heavier traffic of LA night life brewing around them as the hour turns later. “Now you get to watch me order you a bacon cheeseburger that you’ll never be able to finish and a shake from the secret menu.”

“You _are_ a cheap date,” Pepper replies, but she’s leaning into her fist and smiling at him just enough. “Walk on the beach after?”

“Very cliché, Miss Potts. I dig it.” He changes gear, pushing down on the gas and making the mufflers churn like he’s an obnoxious, attention-seeking muscle car prick. Pepper gives a surprised shriek as he weaves through the lanes of the interstate with expert precision.

xx

They do an exceptional job of not running into Howard Stark for the total of a week. 

Pepper doesn’t have to be up at the ass crack of dawn to be at Stark Industries, so she seems to allow herself the sleep in a way she doesn’t during the school semester. This also means she doesn’t join in on the awkward family breakfasts where Tony complains about the fact that they have an honest-to-god breakfast nook while insisting to Jarvis for the twentieth time that he really doesn’t have to make him anything, he lives on Lucky Charms and coffee in Boston and he’s _fine_. (But the man also makes a mean eggs Benedict and it’s already just sitting there and what’s he gonna do, let it go to waste?)

Tony gets a little lost in the rush of triple checking the corrected blueprints for his father’s missile and sitting in on meetings about production deadlines and contracts being held up by the unexpected delay that Obie fabricated to give Tony time to fix his father’s mistakes.

Even Pepper—desperately failing to prevent sunburn on her pale skin after walking around doing tourist-y shit all day—catches on. She spends an entire night with him on budget figures, on material costs, on sales projections. She makes him laugh for the first time all day with a stupid pun and he falls asleep with his head pillowed on her stomach.

Howard only catches them because of his weird sixth-sense of knowing when Tony is trying to get a moment away from it all to just breathe.

There’s really nothing else that he can do, at this point—the missile is in production now, it’s going to the DOD as is. Time to see if it takes out the bad guys or very literally blows up in everyone’s faces.

(But it won’t do that. Tony knows it. He’s never failed at a product design. Not like Howard. He’s saving lives even though the weapons are designed to take them, and that means something, it has to.)

Pepper easily convinces him to play hooky. Hell, _Obie_ told him to take the day, and he rarely defies Howard’s whims of practically chaining Tony to a desk twenty-four-seven.

Tony sleeps in. He drags himself downstairs by lunchtime, where Pepper is sitting at the table with a cup of iced tea and conspiring over what can only be old baby photos with Ana Jarvis.

“I’ve suddenly lost my appetite,” he grumbles, scrunching his nose when he sees a particular shot of himself in the bath on the way by.

“Hush, _boychik_ ,” Ana chides, the pet name rolling easily off her tongue. “I am allowed this. You do not bring such lovely girls home often, I must make the most of it.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” he tries. That means Pepper’s special. She _is_ special. None of his one night stands ever got this treatment. He looks back down at the stack of polaroids. Thank god for that.

“If only I hadn’t had to hear the others,” Ana laments knowingly. “They step all over my husband’s poinsettias when they sneak out of the window. It’s unappreciated.”

Involuntarily he feels warmth creep up his neck. He was never shy about bringing girls home, but he’d been afraid of what would happen if they were spotted on the way out. There was a system by his window, apparently much to Jarvis’ displeasure. Most girls had been too excited for the reputation of sleeping with him to mind that they were being given an inelegant boot down a rope ladder.

“Don’t look smug,” he grumbles to Pepper. “You’re dating me. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I can laugh at your misery and be on your side at the same time.”

“This is dangerous.” Tony points between the two women. “This feels like trouble for me.”

“As always, young sir, your intellect is unparalleled,” comes Jarvis’ voice, placing a glass of iced tea in front of him and a more appreciated sandwich. And next to that an apple torte, still warm and smelling of baked apples and vanilla. It’s Ana’s very favorite, and its sudden appearance raises a flag to Tony.

“Oh I get it, you’re in the doghouse so you’re ganging up on me.” He shakes the offending dessert at the butler, flaking crumbs off onto the table. “What’d you do?”

“He lost a small wager,” Ana says, smiling triumphantly. “One should never bet against their partner.”

“And yet with you, I am always inclined to take the risk.”

Ana leans up to press a kiss to Jarvis’ cheek before gathering up the photos on the table and puttering off to put them away.

Jarvis and Ana have been together since long before Tony was born. He doesn’t know the whole story, but he knows Jarvis used to be a lot more than the simple, mild-mannered butler he’s now settled down into. Despite that, he’s always admired them as a couple. When his own parents were too busy sniping it out over him in the backseat (or worse, in front of a crowd), Ana and Jarvis were kind. Caring. Loving. In some ways he’s glad he had their company more often than not—at least these better parts of them found a way to pass onto him.

“They’re always like that.” He mimes gagging himself to Pepper.

“It’s sweet—and I know you think so too. You’re mushy.”

“I’m not mushy. I’m super handsome and awesome.”

“And mushy.”

“ _And_ , though—that’s an important conjunction, you heard it here first folks, Pepper Potts thinks I’m handsome.”

“I suppose. It’s been so long since we’ve really spent time together. You might have to remind me.”

“Oh, I’ll remind you.”

“You, me, pool. Thirty minutes. Trunks on, shirt _off_.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Tony really does appreciate Pepper’s swimsuit—a one piece with her legs means it’s a well done accentuation of every curve.

He just can’t get his attention away from the grouchy look on her face.

Pepper’s skin is burnt awkwardly and unevenly, patches of her normal freckles occasionally marred by slow-healing red marks. She clearly hates it.

“Oh, Pep,” Tony attempts to sympathize, but chuckles halfway through it. “Honey.”

“I know, I know. I put on sunscreen before I left every time, but it just doesn’t work.”

“Maybe you just need a more experienced hand.” He reaches his fingers out and wiggles them around, insisting for the bottle of sunscreen.

Not that it isn’t a sensual thing, applying the lotion to her exposed skin, but it’s relaxing in a rhythmic way. He gets caught up in the action of genuinely covering her well all over. He allows himself the simple pleasure of holding her close against his chest, running his hands up and down her back, her shoulders, her thighs.

“If I was a masseuse, I’d say you’re holding a lot of tension in your back muscles.” He presses a kiss to the back of her neck. “Too much stress.”

“You should look into it as a career path,” Pepper hums. “Very experienced hands.”

“Was that a dig about my past or a compliment to my dexterity?”

“Mmm. Compliment, I think.” She stands, pressing a hand through his hair on the way to the pool ladder. “It doesn’t really matter to me who you used to sleep with. You know that.”

It’s true—past a frank discussion of STDs and preferred type of protection, Pepper wasn’t really the jealous type in the way any girls he’d dated or slept with more than once could be. She was confident in their relationship, and Tony was happy for it. It made him want other women less and made him believe in his ability to be a better partner to her. He could still appreciate someone gorgeous on the street, but in the end it was Pepper he wanted, Pepper that he would do any number of ridiculous, difficult things to keep. That includes reigning in his older urges to skip around flirting as he pleases.

For a moment he simply watches her in the pool with his feet in the water. She’s a natural at swimming—long legs, fiery hair haloing around her as she floats on her back. The record player is currently spinning Fleetwood Mac—a musical compromise between the two of them. He’s more into hard rock, but she gave a poorly done but adorably sung rendition of _You Make Loving Fun_ during their drive home the other night, and now it’s stuck in his head.

“This place is huge,” she comments, gracefully backstroking from one end of the pool to the other.

“It was the place to be in the 40s, or so I hear.” He doesn’t actually know much about his father’s life before he was born. Naturally, Howard keeps everything close to the vest, and considers just about all of it none of Tony’s business. 

“Dad was sponsoring Hollywood after the war. Lots of quote-unquote production assistants hanging around.”

“And you?”

He kicks water at her. “I thought we weren’t judging my love life.”

“I’m genuinely curious.” She splashes back.

“Mmm. A few girls here and there. Late night skinny dipping just to say we did, that kind of thing. You’re the first in daylight.”

“Aw.” She paddles over, situating herself between his open legs. He leans down to meet her kiss, smelling the chlorine and sunscreen mixed on her skin.

“Are you actually going to get in the pool with me or what?”

“I don’t want to ruin my hair.” He pouts. “Gets all curly.”

“Poor baby.” She keeps their fingers together, tapping her chipping polished nails against his own fingers. “What if I said I _like_ when it’s all messy?”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She pushes herself up further this time, hovering up just over his lap. He supports her as much as he can with his arm, but he’s far more interested in the warmth of her wet mouth, still tasting of tea and cinnamon. 

This is what he’d always strived for summer to feel like, what every hook-up and party and misadventure was supposed to lead to. It’s hours to waste away, the tastes and smells invigorating and exciting and promising of more to come, always more out there past the responsibilities of life.

Howard Stark has enough tact not to scratch his records, but not enough to leave Tony and Pepper well enough alone.

The music stops and with an annoyed clear of his throat, Tony’s father announces himself. 

“Not surprised that I looked all over the house only to find you with your face buried in this young lady’s chest,” Howard snipes. 

Already, Tony feels drained, and yet the fire that his father’s crude words always incite rises just as quickly. Tony rarely parades women around the house like he knows for a fact his father used to do—this isn’t as regular an occurrence as the media or his classmates would like to paint. Honestly, the gall of Howard to accuse him of being flippant after busting his ass for SI all week and taking this one fucking second to _relax_. 

And then there’s the fact that it’s Pepper being slut-shamed too, Pepper being merely Tony’s object when she’s his girlfriend, when she’s intelligent and excellent and sitting right next to Rhodey as his favorite person in the world to be around.

“Real nice, Dad. How about you take that comment and shove it up—“

“Hey.” Pepper presses a hand against his thigh, squeezing gently. She shakes her head back and forth.

What is she doing, trying to protect him? Pepper doesn’t necessarily need the chivalry, but he’s a modern guy, he’s not just gonna let his dad insult his girlfriend right in front of him!

Pepper pulls herself up from the pool in one graceful motion, silently grabbing one of the beach towels from a pool chair and dabbing her hands dry before wrapping the towel around her neck.

Then she walks straight up to his father and offers up her hand to shake.

Pepper Potts doesn’t back down from a challenge. This he very quickly learned. He didn’t realize she was _this_ level of ballsy.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mister Stark. I’m Virginia, Tony’s girlfriend. I’m staying at the house for a few days this summer at the request of your wife. Sorry we haven’t spoken before now, it seems like we just keep missing each other.”

Tony is in love with Pepper, right now. Like, big googly-eyed, mouth open, about to get on one knee kind of stuff, because no one— _no one_ has ever so openly served Howard Stark such a polite, subtle beat-down that he is unable to recover from.

Tony would call it particularly subdued, like when his mother calls out that Howard's had too much to drink at a party and he doesn’t want to argue with her in front of people, so he visibly slows.

The reply that he manages isn’t much.

“Virginia—yes, I see. I apologize for speaking so rashly. I simply wasn’t aware that my son _had_ serious relationships.”

“Maybe if you had a conversation with me that wasn’t about the company or how disappointing I’m going to be at running it one day, you would have heard me constantly mentioning her to literally everyone else in my life,” Tony interjects.

The comment digs just the way Tony intended, as evidenced by the frown that falls onto Howard’s face despite the polite, award-winning smile he usually uses with strangers. Tony smiles toothily in response, playfully kicking his feet in the pool as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“People that don’t know him well assume the same,” Pepper says, easily floating over Tony’s snark. “I’m happy to correct them.”

Her smile is saccharine sweet, genuine suburban Ohio born-and-raised northern manners covering her whip-smart tongue. Oh, god, he’s in it so deep for her, holy shit.

“It’s nice to meet you, then.” Howard attempts to sound sincere, but looks severely constipated. It’s hilarious. He’s going to replay this moment in his head for years to come. “However, I need to speak to my son about company business. Privately. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course, Mister Stark.” Pepper turns to Tony. “I’ll be right back. I’ll grab you something to drink, okay?”

“You complete me!” he shouts after her, because even if it’s playful she needs to know that was the most badass thing he’s ever seen, and he’s going to repay her in literally anything she wants—pretty party gowns, designer heels, even watching every inaccurate, campy science fiction movie under the sun without his personal critiques.

xx

It takes all of Pepper’s composure not to stomp into the kitchen. She holds herself together until the second she’s out of Howard Stark’s range, then spends at least two minutes shaking the same martini.

Older men talking over her? Old hat, she can raise her voice and redirect and take back control with the best of them. 

Tony’s father using her as an avenue to put Tony down? It’s _infuriating_. In all the ways people have pontificated about Tony’s past with women, none had hurt and missed the mark so clearly than Howard assuming his own son wasn’t capable of a real romantic relationship.

His mother clearly wanted as much for him, but his father…it was like he didn’t know what to do with Tony either way—as a good, kind, committed man or as a spoiled, playboy heir. She could see all of the things that Tony described now—the socialite, the hero, and the father that had no interest in his son past a legacy to carry on his name.

“I know that look,” Ana sighs upon entering the room, startling Pepper and causing her to slam the shaker a little harder on the formica countertop than she intended.

“Sorry dear.” Ana places a comforting hand on Pepper’s shoulder. The touch is maternal and incredibly welcome. What she wouldn’t give to rant to her mother right now if it didn’t feel like sharing some kind of private, celebrity gossip that isn't her family’s business.

“So, you met Mister Stark.”

Pepper nods, leaving the over-mixed martini be in favor of leaning her elbows onto the counter.

“He was far more charming in the early days—all of those spritely young things hanging on his every word.” Ana sighs, tutting at the mess of melting ice and spilled gin in front of her. “Ever since his company got into more contracts with the government, he's become incredibly stressed, quicker to anger, distanced from his family.”

Ana clears Pepper’s mess despite her protest at the action, starting over. Pepper doesn’t seem to have the ability to stop her—she’s finding that the Jarvises are kind of just like that.

“And then there is Tony,” Ana continues. “Who of course cannot avoid saying whatever pops into his head. They only build on each other, it’s madness, this house!”

Ana pours in the gin and vermouth like a skilled bartender, every part measured just so. 

“Sometimes it’s hard to remember the man that offered Jarvis this position, the one who so eagerly brought us into his home…”

“But you still see that in him?” Pepper asks. “I mean, I know the press sees something totally different, but it’s hard to imagine that any of it is real when he acts like…that. Or worse, from what Tony’s told me.”

“I do. I truly do.” She adds the ice to the shaker but doesn’t actually move it.

“It’s just…disconnect. Maybe it’s too much energy into his work, maybe he just wasn’t meant to be a father. We will never know. He was excited for the baby and distracted when he came. There are things he will never share about his work, about his life…most of us have learned not to press.”

The outlier being Tony, who loves pushing buttons until they pop off in a mess of thread.

“So, when he can’t be what he should for Anthony, when the boy’s mother is away…we have always done our best to be there for him. Mister Jarvis and I never had children, so we’re happy in that way, to take him under our wing.”

“I know he appreciates it. Really.” Tony sometimes isn’t as open about his feelings as he could be, so she tries to make sure this comes across for him clearly.

Ana smiles over at her as she shakes the martini. She wears vibrant lipstick to match the colorful patterns of her dresses. Her greying hair still shines with large streaks of auburn. She’s vibrant and ostentatious and likely where Tony learned to love standing out and making a scene.

She makes the preparation of the drink an art form, like they do in old movies—peeling the zest in a perfect curl, juice on the rim. Somehow she even guesses that Pepper is a fan of extra olives.

“Drink up, Virginia,” Ana insists, using her full name. All of the Starks seem to be in the habit of it but Tony, who took to her nickname like a house on fire and refuses anything else. “He will be out for the evening soon. That is why he’s speaking to Tony. There are things to attend to while he and Misses Stark are in Washington. They leave in the morning.”

“Maybe it’s best to get to know them in small doses,” Pepper proposes, sipping the drink. It’s ice cold and the perfect balance of liquor and vermouth. “Thank you for this and for—well, everything. The baby pictures, the talk…it’s been really nice to get to know you.”

“Of course! Tell me, are you enjoying your trip?”

“I really am.” 

Despite Tony’s worries about his family drama, it’s been a much-needed vacation. This last semester of balancing her new relationship with her junior workload and having a part-time retail job over the summer have been a lot more than she realized. She mostly gets the days to herself, lazily walking or taking a cab to popular spots of the city. With her pocket money wholly unused, she spends a fair amount of time sight-seeing and shopping around. She even went on one of those terrible celebrity house tours and only wished that she’d invited Tony along.

When she is back at the mansion, she brings back books to read through in peace—dirty romance novels, science fiction paperbacks, worn copies of _The Boxcar Children_ novels that she adored as a child. She also occasionally snoops around the mansion a little, accidentally activating the house security system at one point and freaking out until Jarvis had turned it off. It was antiquated, according to Tony, and his AI was going to be the thing to replace it, if it all worked out as planned.

To Ana, she simply says, “I was still all—wired, at first. It’s been nice to forget about things and just…be for a while.”

Pepper laughs to herself, spinning the martini glass gently in her fingers and watching the ripples. 

“It’s funny—usually it’s Tony breaking me out of things, but this week he’s been the one that needs to relax.”

Ana’s face is tilted up at her, smile crookedly hidden against her fist.

“What?”

“I could tell when Edwin first came home—Tony was enamored with you. Then again, he’s always had something to catch his attention. It’s not hard.” Ana shrugs, and Pepper has to agree. He’s almost always doing _something_ , productive to only him or to the people he drags along into it.

“But meeting you, seeing you both together—it’s like with his friend, Mister Rhodes. He’s a good influence. It’s different from a passing interest or a friend who could come or go. It’s real. It’s what we want for him, when he’s surrounded by all of this—this _bullshit_.”

She lets the curse go with a frankness that Pepper didn’t expect, and they both giggle like it’s the first they’ve ever uttered.

Ana places her hand on Pepper’s. “We just want him to be happy. To be loved.”

Pepper looks away, knowing her face is going red even under her splotchy sunburn. They haven’t been dating for that long, so she’s hesitant to voice love, but then again…

They’ve known each other for a year total, now, and it was always friendship before it was anything else. And Tony had said, when he admitted his feelings that it might be the “other” L word too. It was never out of the question. It just feels weird to admit to someone who’s practically a stranger when she can’t even admit it to herself yet, and particularly not to Tony.

Ana pats her hand, eyes knowing. “Sometimes you just know. You’re a smart girl, you’ll figure it all out. Just know, if you ever want to come back, just call. We’re happy to have you.”

“Thank you, Ana.” Pepper returns the hand hold with a squeeze before picking up the martini glasses. “I better get this to Tony. I have a feeling he’ll need it.”

“Very well. Enjoy yourselves.”

“Join us for dinner later? You and Jarvis?”

“We would be delighted.”

xx

“Thank you for the heads up on the dress code this time,” Pepper says. She smoothes out a wrinkle on her dress. “But to be honest, I kind of thought we were just going somewhere nice for lunch.”

“That is on the agenda,” Tony assures, pulling into the parking space labeled: _Howard Stark, CEO_. “This is just a pit-stop.”

“Because…?”

He sighs, hopping over the door of his convertible and helping Pepper out of the passenger’s side of the low-sitting car by the hand. 

“Obie insisted.” Obadiah is more tolerant of Tony’s more laissez-faire working-from-home thing than Howard, but he claimed that a Stark being out of the office too long was bad for morale. He expects Tony to make an appearance.

“And you brought me along…why?”

“What, you don’t want to spend time with me? Live out an office hook-up fantasy in my dad’s office?”

“This thing you have with having sex in your father’s office is starting to concern me.”

“What? You think it’s some kind of reverse-Freudian psychosexual thing?”

“Well I do _now_.”

“That guy was a hack. Besides, this is purely territorial—my dad was and still is a real asshole about me being in there. I could piss all over his desk instead if you want.”

“Can we leave bodily fluids out of it entirely?”

“The things I do for you.”

Pepper loops her arm through his as she falls into step with him into the main Stark Industries building. He gives a wave to the current front-desk girl, a brunette that’s easily distracted by his attention and almost spills coffee down her front because of it.

_Still got it_ , he thinks. Pepper snorts instead of being impressed.

“Swanky, huh?” They arrive at the top floor offices, all open windows and comfortably large conference rooms.

“You spend a lot of time complaining about this place, but here you are showing off like it’s your pride and joy.”

He shrugs. “Parts of it are.”

“Really?”

“If I give my dad anything, it’s that we’re good to our own. As much as I hate all of the bureaucratic crap, all of the expectations—being a part of a legacy like this, providing good jobs for people…it isn’t all bad.”

Pepper squints up at him for a beat, then says, “You know, you and your dad might get along better if you told him that.”

“And further stroke his ego? Please,” Tony scoffs. “You sound like my mother.”

“I just meant…I know how much you care. It’s endearing, how much of yourself you put into the things you love. Maybe everyone else should know that side of you exists too.”

He hums in response. Pepper’s intentions are good, but the issue is that not everyone is as genuinely caring as she is about him. His father could easily hear a comment like that and tell Tony that it’s a legacy he doesn’t deserve and never will.

Beverly is out of the office—probably on her lunch break. Tony takes the opportunity to sneak them into his father’s office uncontested. He’s long since figured out how to crack the simple number keypad for the door, and he changes the code whenever the need to get on his dad’s nerves arises.

His dad likes to look over the Stark Industries campus sometimes, standing at the long glass windows with scotch in hand. It’s his father’s way of admiring everything he’s built, but Tony likens it to Howard looking like some kind of fictional super-villain.

Pepper takes in the opulent office space with a quick spin, her gaze landing in the corner.

“Is that—?”

“Hm? Oh yeah. It’s the original model. He’s crazy about the Expo. He keeps saying he’s going to bring it back again, but the people in Financial think he’s off his rocker. It’s not like we can show the public weapons demonstrations, and his last attempt at flying cars wasn’t exactly a smashing success.”

“I could see it,” Pepper replies, tracing her hand over the plastic uni-sphere directly centered amongst the complex. “You presenting your new AI, an adoring public screaming your name…”

“My dad won’t even let me update the mansion’s ancient security system.” Tony flops into his father’s desk chair with a huff. “Jarvis’ voice recording just says ‘halt’ over and over until you shut it off. No way he’ll consider the AI as anything but a hobby project.”

“He won’t be in charge forever.” Pepper walks away from the display, meeting him at the desk chair. “And you’re not going to let this discovery go to waste—you’re going to do way bigger things with your life than just make explosives for the military.”

She runs a hand over his hair. “You have a good heart, and you’re a genius. If you really try…I think you can do just about anything.”

Her confidence in him is staggering. He only sees a future of board meetings and Middle Eastern weapons demonstrations, but Pepper…she’s got something else in mind when she looks at him. Something bright and wonderful and possibly impossible. Her, the pragmatic, Type-A being the one of them that’s dreaming.

Tony offers an open arm. Pepper squints at him.

“You really think I’m that focused on the sex thing? Can you just—indulge me for a second, please.”

She sighs, but obliges, settling herself comfortably on his lap, leaving her legs hanging to the side. He curls his arm around her hip, keeping her supported against his chest. She wraps an arm around the back of his neck and he leans into the touch, meeting her in the middle for a kiss. It’s warm and slow and she tastes like citrus.

When they break apart she’s smiling in that way that says he had a decent idea, but she won’t admit it out loud. 

She’s wearing a more natural shade of lipstick and takes care to wipe away the evidence of their kiss with her thumbs.

“Alright, Mister Stark, tell me what you’re working on here.”

He mumbles his answer through another kiss, this time pressed to her neck. “I have lots of important things, like paperwork,” kiss. “And files,” kiss. “And schematics.”

“Then you should probably take an hour to do them to please Obadiah, don’t you think?”

He whines, burying himself in her neck. “Can’t you just be vapid and obsessed with me for my body, money, and power for like, two seconds?”

“I was very interested in your body when I was kissing you,” she answers, but it’s practically pitying, like he’s a child who needs assuring. “Come on, I’ll help you. It will be fun.”

Predictably, it’s not fun.

Okay, well, it’s not all fun. At first it’s kind of great—Pepper is still on his lap and she’s reading him paperwork from legal and lazily running her fingers over the hairs on the back of his neck and he’s almost asleep when she realizes that he’s one hundred percent tuned out to anything she’s saying.

Then it’s actually reading the paperwork himself on the office couch while Pepper sits at his father’s desk—why is _that_ hot—and catches his father’s numerous budgeting errors. (He’s worse than Tony. If Financial saw those unedited figures, he’d have a lot more questions about his age and mental capabilities.) 

It’s quiet and he’s bored, but it’s also kind of nice in the way that being with people you get along with means you don’t have to be doing much of anything to be having a nice time.

A quick rap on the door followed by Obie’s entrance is what breaks the silence.

“I’m glad you decided to grace us with your presence, kiddo,” Obie says, stopping mid-step when the person at Howard’s desk is female and definitely not Tony. “How did you…?”

“She’s with me,” Tony calls, waving from his slouched position on the couch and taking the opportunity of distraction to roll to his feet.

“Virginia Potts,” Pepper introduces with a nervous wave. She definitely shouldn’t be as deep into Stark Industries paperwork as she has been from a legal standpoint, and that’s the kind of thing Obie’s usually a stickler about.

“She’s, um—girlfriend, visiting, remember?”

“And apparently vying for your position,” Obie mumbles, looking at the paperwork spread on the desk. It’s the kind of tedious crap that makes Tony pull his hair out, but gets Pepper into the Zone. 

“Seriously, are you looking for work?” Obie offers. “I’m looking to replace my nephew, he’s a real pain in the ass.”

Tony laughs dryly. “Very funny.”

“I thought so.” Obie taps the numbered sheets. “Where’d you learn to do this, Miss Potts?”

“Harvard,” Pepper answers simply, her back a little straighter.

“Harvard,” Obie repeats, stroking his beard.

“Well, I’ll tell you this: despite hanging out with this loser, you have a bright future ahead of you, Miss Potts.” Obie reaches into his pocket and pulls out his stack of business cards. “Take my card. Give me a call if you need connections going forward, I’m sure we could set something up.”

“Are you—are you _poaching_ my girlfriend, right now?”

“I’m not—Tony, I’m just giving her my card.”

“This is an insult. Do I have to fight you for her honor, next?”

“Thank you, Mister Stane,” Pepper interrupts. “I’m going to grad school going forward, but I appreciate the offer.”

“Yeah, see Obie? She doesn’t need your dirty job offers, she’s independent, she’s awesome.”

(And besides that, if anyone is going to offer Pepper a job at Stark Industries, it’s damn well going to be Tony himself.)

“Tony,” Pepper hisses.

“It’s okay, kid, I’m used to him by now.” Obie waves at the air. “Listen, you two take a break, get lunch on me, okay?” He grabs at his wallet and offers a few bills—the hundreds are nothing new to Tony, but Pepper sputters out a few attempts at refusal.

“No, no, I insist. You kids have fun, get out of the office for a while. I know we’ve taken a lot of Tony’s time up lately, it’s only fair.”

Obie pats both of their shoulders before he turns and makes his leave with a wave behind his back.

“I don’t—“ Pepper starts, then shakes her head. “What just—?”

“You’ll get used to it,” he says, curling an arm over her shoulders and thinking about all of the time he wants to have with her—what he wouldn’t give for a million afternoons in that stuffy office as long as she’s there too.

xx

The end of Pepper’s trip has to come to an end eventually.

Both of them know this, but she’d never really set a date for her return home, and Tony never really pushed for one.

It feels a little bit like a dream, particularly the couple of weeks where Tony’s parents are still out of state, having hopped from business in DC to managing the SI office space in New York.

With the house mostly to themselves and Tony’s time at the SI offices lessened, they spend their days like a true vacation—day-drinking, following their whims on what to do, lazily exchanging kisses in the morning and slowly pressing each other over the brink at night because they have the time.

If they weren’t naturally such independent people, she imagines the extended time together would have felt more stifling. 

Instead, when Tony has been talking about the same project for two hours that clearly means he would rather be working on that project because he can’t get it out of his head, Pepper takes the day and happily leaves Tony to his own devices. He’s more sleep deprived when she lays eyes on him again at the end of the day—or early into the next—but the restlessness abates enough for him to share a meal or a glass of wine without fidgeting or spacing out so much, and most of all he is visibly happier, as if lifting a burden.

In kind, Pepper gets cooped up easily—she’s surrounded by sun and sights, and for once she’s less inclined to be pragmatic about her plans. Some days she joins Ana or Jarvis to run errands, happy for the company and a chance to leave the stuffy mansion. Other times she simply goes to the beach, heavily coated in sunblock and determined to remember the sensation of the sand and surf between her toes. One day she even buys a disposable camera and visits all of the places her parents suggested after buying some kind of travel guide. 

(The last few slots of the film strip are eaten up by an obsession Tony gets upon finding the camera: taking pictures of himself for her to remember him by.

“What are you, dying? I’m going to see you as soon as we’re back in Boston.”

“Yes, but Pep, without these pictures, what will you fondly stroke in the moonlight, thinking only of when I’ll return to you again?

“Now you sound like you’re going off to war.”)

Their worst argument is the only one with any real heat behind it, and it is Tony not sleeping for 72 hours straight and being an asshole about both eating the dinner _she made him_ and _the thought of sleeping for eight hours_.

Pepper swipes Jarvis’ keys to lock up the lab when Tony goes to get a drink, and then Tony goes to grumble and pout on the couch and immediately falls asleep sitting up. 

Not the most mature on either of their parts, but he crawls into bed after five hours of couch sleep and groggily admits she might have had a point about him needing a nap, and she pulls his arm around her waist, and that’s the end of it.

Overall: an exciting trip. A good trip of getting to know Tony and his life better and realizing she likes it. Not just the money or the mansion—though it certainly is more impressive than her one-story suburban home in Ohio. She just likes Tony.

Scratch that. She loves him. Like…more than she already kind of did but was afraid to admit. It’s just—she thinks of her best friend and it’s Tony’s smile she pictures, his eyes lighting up, the way his hands snap and click rhythmically when solving a problem, his hated reading glasses’ earpiece hanging from his teeth as he scribbles formulas she’s hopelessly lost about on scrap paper mid-conversation.

He’s chivalrous one minute and purposefully lacking in manners the next. He careens into things head-on with claims that he’s already considered the consequences and decided they don’t matter. He blushes when Pepper says she likes his hair, or his rough, scraped up hands, or his slow, chaste kiss. He is loud and attention-seeking in public, quiet and deliberate in private. He rests his head over her heart sometimes, just listening to the beats.

So, Pepper loves Tony. She just needs to, y’know. Tell him. Preferably before they’re separated for the rest of the summer.

She knocks on the heavy glass of the reinforced workshop doors, entering before actually receiving any kind of answer over the bass-heavy tones of the late Bon Scott crooning, “ _Blood on the streets, blood on the rocks, blood in the gutter, every last drop!_ ” from the jukebox.

This lab was originally Howard’s, but Tony claims it would mostly gather dust without his use. 

(“Being CEO—it’s a lot of politics, a lot of travel back and forth to DC,” Tony said, shaking his head while it was half-buried under the hood of his roadster. “Not so much inventing, anymore. And when he does it’s…”

“Subpar?” she’d suggested.

Tony nodded, almost sad. “I think he might be realizing he’s out of his prime and it pisses him off to remember whatever he did down here before. So it’s my playground now, more or less.”)

The evidence of Tony’s ownership is clear in the massive desktop monitors crowding the tables. A stack of floppy disks with scrawled titles leans haphazardly over a stack of Tony’s notebooks. The keyboard to one of the computers is missing a few keys, while another has almost all of the letters worn off.

More abandoned are the tables of chemical lab equipment—beakers and bunsen burners, a cabinet full of vials and possibly outdated medical supplies. A fire extinguisher covered in ash is clearly the most used item, kept right near Tony’s station.

The lab was clearly designed to be more spartan, but Tony’s livened things up—a _Star Wars_ poster here, a few discarded piles of oil-stained clothing there. There’s even a futon in the corner, but she knows by now that his use of it is rarer than it should be.

And then there’s the robot.

DUM-E, as he’s named, isn’t exactly the most sophisticated of AI according to Tony, but he was the first Tony ever made. He can follow basic commands to a point, even communicate with a few beeps and chirps. She doesn’t understand any of its so-named language, but she thinks it’s kind of cute when it rolls around her like a puppy sniffing a new visitor, and telling Tony so only makes it pat her hair in a way she decides to take as complimentary.

As it is, currently DUM-E rolls up in greeting, dangerously waving around a glass mug that she hopes is empty.

Tony finally notices her and sighs, standing to turn down the music and glare at his bot.

“He won’t put it down,” Tony states, hand on his hip. “I expressed—to myself—that I was out of coffee an hour ago, and he just keeps shoving this very moldy, very gross, old, empty mug in my face.”

The bot attempts to do so again, but Tony shoves it away, spinning the bot’s arm into an entire 360 degree turn.

“Such a disaster. I don’t know why I bother.”

“Tony,” Pepper offers, looking at the bot as it whirrs and waves the mug at both of them insistently. “Have you ever considered that he understood what you meant and just can’t do anything about it because there isn’t a coffee machine down here?”

Sometimes, Tony reminds her of a dial-up modem. The internet takes a minute and the computer makes a lot of noise, but eventually, it gets there. “Oh. Shit.”

Tony gives the bot’s arm a pat.

“Sorry, buddy. I’m all good. Coffee no longer required. Why don’t you charge up, huh?”

The bot grudgingly allows Tony to pry the mug from its metal claw, giving a few almost musical little chirps at her as it trundles over to the charging port that Tony has set up in the corner.

“Honestly, why _don’t_ I have a coffee machine down here?”

“To retain my reassurance that with an incentive, you’ll join us out there in the real world some day.”

He points to the garage doors. “There’s outside here too.”

Sensing an argument that’s going exactly nowhere, she detours, settling comfortably on one of the metal tables next to his rolling lab chair.

“How’s it going?”

“Going,” he hums, settling in the chair and huffing at the blocky letters on screen. “Going and going.”

“That good, huh?”

Tony aimlessly picks up a hard drive that’s sitting on the table, lightly tapping it against his thigh.

“It’s—the learning algorithm is solid, right? Like, call and response kind of stuff. I give it data, and I say to get the data, and it does it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But there’s so much _more_ if I could just—if I had computing power, _real_ computing power, military grade, I could probably—“

“Hey, Tony?”

“I mean, think about just talking to it—voice recognition, no typing required, and it could follow programed subroutines to—”

“I love you.”

Tony stills. The electronic brick in his hand falls into the floor with a heavy slap.

“Was that important?” she asks, pinching her face. Maybe that wasn’t the most elegant way to say it, but he’d gotten that smile on his face that he has when he’s excited and problem-solving and she just—yeah.

“Maybe. Kinda doesn’t matter.”

“Really? Because I feel like later you’re going to be really mad that I made you—“

“I cannot believe—“ he starts, then stops. “You—!” He points his finger, then presses both hands to his forehead.

“Are you okay?”

“Am I—No, I’m not okay! You beat me to saying I love you first!”

He picks up the drive from the floor, throwing it onto the table hard.

“Of course I love you! I’ve been shoving it into the back of my throat for weeks because I didn’t want to scare you off and you just—like that!? Jesus, Pep, I was going to make a big, romantic spectacle out of it and you just spit it out right here!?”

“I didn’t know I was going to do it! I just did!”

“Since when are you spontaneous?”

“Since—will you just—“

Pepper pulls him close by the loose material of his t-shirt, skidding the wheels of his chair between her legs and pressing him close, arcing herself down to catch his lips. She just manages to brace herself against the flimsy metal table without falling.

“Upstairs?” she suggests, noticing that he’s completely out of the chair and practically pressing her flat into the table.

“What, you think my lab is really that dirty?”

It’s more that she doesn’t know what has been in this lab, and what bleach can and can’t get rid of concerning the materials used in the creation of weaponry and explosive reactions.

“Do you want to argue with me or make out with me?”

The fact that it takes him a few seconds really says a lot about them both, but she becomes distracted by the entrance of his tongue darting between her lips and her light annoyance channels into pulling him closer with a gentle tug of his hair.

“You’re lucky I love you, Miss Potts,” Tony says, trying to sound haughty but desperately leaning into the touch of her nails against his neck.

Between the next kiss, she grunts, “Same to you, Mister Stark.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Sciocchezze** \- (Italian) - Nonsense  
>  **Boychik** \- (Yiddish) - endearment for a young boy.
> 
> Title from Fleetwood Mac’s _You Make Loving Fun_. (I didn’t want to spoil its inclusion in the story at the beginning, lol.) The song Tony’s listening to in the workshop is AC/DC’s _If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)_.
> 
> This is tagged with _Agent Carter References_ because there are locations, references, and characterizations that take direct root from that show. (Particularly, Ana and Edwin Jarvis and the descriptions of the Stark Mansion.) The show still has plenty of clips available online, so I would totally suggest looking up the ones with Howard or the Jarvises in them if you haven’t seen the show, but enjoyed seeing them here/want to see the Stark Mansion in action in the 40s.
> 
> As always, kudos, comments, etc. are appreciated! I worked my butt off to make this story happen, so knowing my fellow Pepperony fans liked it is always super comforting.


End file.
